Biological heart valve prostheses are increasingly adopted due to their higher compatibility with the human heart and due to their behaviour being akin to the behaviour of a native heart valve.
Such prosthetic heart valves may be of the expandable type, e.g. with a plurality of coapting valve leaflets of an animal tissue (for instance, bovine or porcine pericardium) coupled with an armature including e.g. a mesh-like structure (for instance a stent structure) of e.g. an elastic or superelastic material such as Nitinol.
Such heart valve prostheses may be delivered to the implantation site in a collapsed condition, that is in a condition radially contracted to reduced dimensions.
Collapsing the valve onto a delivery tool may involve “crimping” (i.e. radially collapsing) the valve and coupling it with a delivery instrument, this being likely to be a delicate stage of the heart valve replacement intervention.
An expandable prosthetic biological heart valve may be stored in a storage (e.g. sterile) solution within a storage container (“jar”), which may be opened only just before the crimping operation. Opening the container and placing the valve into a crimping tool for crimping the valve onto the delivery instrument may imply manipulation of the valve prosthesis by an operator in order to handle, angularly orient, axially position and eventually crimp the valve onto the delivery tool, without in any way affecting the integrity of the prosthesis.
Document US-A-2009/0054976 discloses an exemplary loading tool for withdrawing, crimping and loading a stent mounted valve into a delivery catheter and for pushing the stent mounted valve from the delivery catheter into a native heart valve orifice.
One or more embodiments herein aim at providing an improved arrangement for holding a valve prosthesis, optionally in a storage container and/or in a delivery instrument or kit.